There was really only ever one piece that could mark this orchestra’s connection to one of our county’s most celebrated composers in the year that marks 50 years since his death – Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, written for the consecration of the newly rebuilt Coventry Cathedral, and premiered there by the CBSO in 1962, when the memories of war were still frighteningly real.
It’s music that remains in the DNA of the orchestra, and on November 11th — Remembrance Day — the CBSO will perform it once again at Coventry Cathedral.
It’s not a comfortable piece, but a timeless, intensely moving meditation on man’s inhumanity to man. As resonant today as the day it was written, the immense work is both a reflection on war, and a cry for peace. Performing it again, in the place where it was first heard, is in no way an act of nostalgia, it’s music that still needs to be heard, as the world grows ever more troubled by conflict.
The scale is extraordinary, calling on the full forces of CBSO’s orchestra and chorus, along with a number of guest soloists. After Coventry, we visit Lucerne, Brussels and Luxembourg, with over 200 artists ‘on the road’. It’s Birmingham’s orchestra, creating an epic event here in the Midlands, before taking it to some of Europe’s finest concert halls.
It’s a reminder of something that we sometimes forget to say clearly enough: that big artistic statements do not only happen in London. This concert, at Coventry Cathedral, on the 11th of November, is for and about the Midlands, its history, and its people. A cultural moment with worldwide resonance, rooted entirely in place.
That sense of rootedness runs through everything we are doing in our new 2026-27 season.
We are in our third year with Kazuki Yamada as Music Director, and the relationship between him and the orchestra has become something very special indeed. Concert after concert, the connection deepens. To mark that, we are committing to two symphony cycles running in parallel — a full Beethoven cycle through 2027, and the next chapter of our ongoing Mahler series, with his symphonies opening and closing the season. It’s ambitious, and it also feels exactly right for us, right now. You discover a narrative by sitting with the complete work of a single composer — an evolution, a maturation — and Kazuki and this orchestra are ready for that kind of commitment.
We are also celebrating contemporary music with the same energy. This season, we mark the 90th birthday of Steve Reich. We have appointed a composer in residence, Anna Clyne, whose new work we will premiere. The CBSO performs the music being written today as naturally as it does the scores of Britten, Beethoven and Bach — and our players, who are extraordinary, thrive in the space to perform the full breadth of such repertoire.
Access is not an afterthought for us. It is, in many ways, the point. CBSO in the City returns for its third year across the August Bank Holiday weekend — free music in parks, gardens, pubs and cafes, and some more surprising locations across Birmingham, including reaching into communities with whom we have not yet connected. Our one-pound ticket offer continues: pick up a flyer at any CBSO in the City event and you can get into anything in the new season for a pound. We mean it when we say this music is for everyone.
So does our Community Board, which brings together faith leaders and community leaders from across the city to help us understand Birmingham’s extraordinary cultural complexity and hold us accountable to it. The result is programming that celebrates the city as it actually is. Our enduring partnership with the Orchestral Qawwali Project, led by associate artist Rushil Ranjan, draws on Sufi poetry and fills Symphony Hall with some of the most diverse audiences I have seen anywhere. We celebrate Bollywood music as a core part of who we are as a city. We use our rehearsal home on Berkley Street as a small performance venue for evenings curated by the Community Board — sitar players, tabla players, Sikh sacred music, Bangladeshi New Year.
And for children who have never been near a live orchestra, there are Notelets concerts, with chamber music, storytelling and instruments to try, created and led by our own players. One of my favourite moments from last season was a chamber ensemble performing S Club 7 to a room full of dancing school kids. That this orchestra commits as much to this work, as it does Mahler, Beethoven and Britten, is why I love it so much.
When I look at this season, I see an orchestra that knows who and what it’s for. It’s not for a particular kind of audience, or a particular kind of music. It’s for Birmingham and for the Midlands, and it’s in demand across the world. It’s for the die-hard orchestral fans, and for anyone who has never been and thinks it is not for them. It’s for the people who have been coming for decades and for the six-year-old who picks up a triangle at the end of a Notelets concert and cannot put it down.
In short, it’s for you, and we hope to see you at a concert soon.
For more information of the 2026-27 season, visit https://cbso.co.uk